Perceptions of Femininity in Early Irish Society by Helen Oxenham (review)

This study breaks new ground in its thorough readings of “femininity” in vernacular Irish texts dating from the establishment of Christianity in the fifth century to around 900 AD. Drawing on contemporary theories of gender and gender construction, Oxenham defines her project as examining not “the ways in which women ‘really’ behaved” but rather “what the authors of the sources wished their audiences to believe of women, and the ways in which they constructed their works in order to reflect this. ‘Femininity’ is therefore defined as a trait, behaviour, or quality assigned to, and constructed around, a woman or group of women, specifically, and primarily, because of her biological sex” (p. 3).

She cautions that “femininity” in early Irish sources reflects the intentions and expectations of elite ecclesiastical males, influenced by trends in early Christian Europe. In exploring “perceptions” of femininity rather than seeking what life was “really” like for women, Oxenham challenges the view that women in early Irish texts are portrayed negatively as a group because of their sex. Instead, women occupied more than one category, and other factors like social status, wealth, and even (in some cases) “professional status” (p. 4) influenced how women were represented. Oxenham examines a variety of texts, from law tracts to penitentials and saints’ lives to lyric poems and prose tales, noting how these often differ radically in their intended purposes and target audiences. For instance, we don’t know how much the penitentials were used, especially outside male monastic communities, and it’s unclear if the laws were “practical” texts rather than just “legal manuals” (p. 11) used by lawyers. Unlike scholars who have generalized across centuries, thus “failing to distinguish between original texts and later notations added to them,” Oxenham argues that these early texts present a number of “heterogeneous femininities, varying according to the type of source and the type of women represented” (p. 6).

The Introduction sets out the hierarchical structure of early Irish society, where age and status were often more important markers than sex. The legal texts may construct an “idealistic society which never really existed” but also suggest “how the authors of those texts believed it should have worked” (p. 14). Male and female children under the age of twelve are treated equally in the legal texts Bretha Crólige and the Díre-text that specify payments for injuries and sick-maintenance (p. 16). As Oxenham notes, “both boys and girls are here ‘unmen,’ but they are not ‘feminine’: sex and gender are outweighed by the consideration of age” (p. 17). In the penitentials, children are given lighter penances than adults, although not all penitentials treat boys and girls alike (p. 18). Women’s legal capacity was linked to status as well as sex and dependency; wives and slaves were dependents, but so too was the son of a living father because he had not yet inherited the right to kin land, and none of these could act legally in their own right. Clerics, women, and children were all protected from violence under the Cáin Adomnáin of 697 AD (p. 30). Religious women could not act as priests, but in many other respects they were equal with male religious of the same social rank.

Chapter 2 further examines representations of women from all classes, noting that the most important class division was between free and unfree (p. 51). Were the roles assigned to women in the legal texts actually “grounded in the women’s femininity,” or can we discern “perceptions of a feminine norm” in them (p. 42)? The answer is complicated. The misogynistic wisdom text Tecosca Cormaic (The Instructions of Cormac) represents women negatively as one homogenous group (pp. 42–43). Yet other texts like the Hibernensis lay out separate “rules for virgins, widows, and married women” (p. 43); although women form a distinct category, their sex was not always the most important factor. All...